


Mercy Twice

by pennypaperbrain



Series: Pennypaperbrain's Miscellaneous Ficlets [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BDSM, F/M, Het, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-05
Updated: 2012-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-29 00:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/313823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennypaperbrain/pseuds/pennypaperbrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is going through Sherlock's head when Irene says ‘I would have you right here, on this desk, until you begged for mercy twice’?</p><p>ETA 13/4/13: Now with fantastic <a href="http://jesperanda.tumblr.com/post/47988615490">ebook cover</a> by jesperanda.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mercy Twice

‘I would have you right here, on this desk, until you begged for mercy twice.’

Sherlock listens to this woman. He is silent for her, and that is not a place he has visited before. Something in him rises towards her, moment by moment. And she reels it in. So very unlike John.

She taught him something, months before this. How to be beaten and whipped, and to dream of her in his drugged humiliation, hearing his thoughts in her voice. He woke up with the mark of her lips where the leather had kissed his cheek.

 _The whims of the pathetic._ That was his own verdict. Or Stockholm Syndrome. Disorder. Unnecessary…ness.

He researched her work, as he would that of any opponent. In her hands the banality of sex was rendered to a subtlety and complexity that was almost worthy of his attention. The images returned to him, lying half-dreaming at night, and desire came up to meet them. Her black-gloved punishing hand, his chained, chafed wrist. The bitterness of his soul, and a kindred mind strong enough that he could dash himself against it, and if he broke they would break together. Another facet of the game.

Their bodies would not fit, not as flesh on flesh. Leather on sweat, will on suffering, blood on metal though, yes. He had not guessed that need was in him, deep as the need for food or rest. Denying it brings the same fierce victory as denying them.

In the light of day, because he is Sherlock and he does not recoil or lie, he examined this new data about himself and filed it in its proper place.

Now she is invoking it again.

‘I’ve never begged for mercy in my life.’

A bald fact. He never wanted to before. Hardly his sharpest ever riposte. But it was that or ask how she would do it. Ask her in.

‘ _Twice._ ’

Sherlock is silent again.

*

His eyelids flicker, and Irene has won, as far as either of them ever will.

She will not take him – there are larger things at stake – but she allows herself that _might have been_ , for a moment. To hell with the desk, in the world they should inhabit she would bind his wrists and chain them overhead, too tight, too high for comfortable standing. A blindfold for those arrogant eyes, to humble him although it deprive her as well. With whips and fear and sudden kindness she would shape him as she has so many male bodies, tracing their curious firmness, the way they carry suffering in the knit of long muscles, remoter to her than the swell of a female breast but all still her business, her craft.

But this body is Sherlock Holmes. He suffers so beautifully, for so long, in his silence. The begging, when at last it came, incoherent and torn from the roots of him, would transform them both. Sustenance for her. Release for him. Simple, human things. She knows what people like, and even the two of them are people.

Sherlock does not fully understand this yet.

O, for a life where she could show him.

All they have, though are the moments of Sherlock’s silence. And John Watson’s open, amazed face, witnessing.

She will be gone from here soon.

She leaves this lesson for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Dammit, I never thought it would happen, but A Scandal in Belgravia made me write het. Well, that's what happens when someone actually introduces a credibly-written BDSM dynamic into actual canon.
> 
> Whether or not this brief ficlet has got the het out of my system remains to be seen. I may have to write Sherlock/Irene PWP to complete the job.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[cover art] Mercy Twice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/761575) by [jesperanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesperanda/pseuds/jesperanda)




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